Done? Not quite, but it's time to unspool.

[icarus]

Ah. I just finished my last class for the quarter. Now I have just one 12-page research paper and a five-page essay (I have a first draft, need a second draft). Due next Tuesday.

Witness the Icarus unspooling.

And now, from auburnnothenna: Ask me a question about one of my stories. It can be absolutely anything in ANY fic and I will tell you the honest-to-God answer. Don’t hold back. Ask about posted fic, WIPs, series, or things I've only briefly mentioned, and I will do my best to answer. All my fic is here.

Comments

[winstonmom.livejournal.com]

Reunion for some reason has a special place in my heart (don't ask) what happened to the boys?

PS Just honest curiosity, I don't want to sound whiny :)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

In the finished version in my head...

Draco and his wife have a miserable time. She decides she loves him (when in reality she can't stand the idea of losing him, not quite the same thing). Even though she's known it was a sham marriage all along. So makes great trouble about the divorce.

Draco moves into Ron's shit-hole. Draco's daughter comes to visit them and she's scarily well-behaved. Draco's a "kids should be seen and not heard" dad. She's a perfectly polite little person right up until her carriage comes to pick her up. It totally freaks Ron out.

Ron's job goes to hell, so he goes for broke on the pregnancy thing, hoping it happens before he gets fired. If nothing else, he wants to see people's faces when he tells them.

They try and try and try and try to get pregnant, but nothing happens. Snape tells them that their chances were minimal in the first place, so don't complain to him. Perhaps it's the incapatibility of the Malfoy-Weasley genes. He hands over a Chinese wizard's ceremony of ancestor pacification, saying it can't hurt.

Ron and Draco fumble through but can't figure out most of the ancestor pacification (much of it doesn't make sense if you're not Chinese), so they give up and have sex. They stop taking the potions and Ron starts coming down with s stomach flu, calling in sick to work.

Ron asks Draco to babysit his kids because he has to work extra hours to make up for the time he missed. He comes home to find Draco has put his kids in cages. Draco thinks it's suitable because they're all animals. Cue big row.

Ron gets sick again, which is just bizarre, so they take him to the medi-wizard. The medi-wizard can't figure it out. They fail to mention the potion Ron had been taking until a month before.

Snape hears of it and is furious with them, Did I not tell you to keep me informed?! Turns out Ron got pregnant once he stopped taking the potion (it's complicated, involving the need for his body to settle in between doses because each time he dosed himself it made subtle changes and with his body changing all over the place, an egg couldn't implant. The boys look green at this detailed description, and Snape is delighted at their horror). But because Ron had stopped taking the potion, the female characteristics were shutting down, putting both Ron and the baby at risk. They manage to pull through... and then at the end realize, holy shit. Ron's preg... it's real.

Snape finds this all very scientifically interesting but assures them the baby is highly unlikely to survive to term.

At which point Ron goes through a very crazy version of female symptoms that don't quite match what happens to women. For example, Ron gets very horny, but he doesn't want to be fucked, he wants to fuck. But because of the potion he can't get it up.

Ron reaches a point where he has to tell his kids what's going on. And his ex-wife. She's furious with him, and thinks he's nuts. The kids react strangely. Draco considers it none of his daughter's business and doesn't tell her.

Somewhere in here, Ron loses his job and while Draco pays the rent on the house, he finally exiles his wife to a wing of the Malfoy Manor and has Ron move in there. Ron's worried about living in the same house as the ex-wife but Draco assures him that he used to go weeks without meeting up with his family.

Then there's a whole section of vague stuff about Ron's friends and Neville and Harry and Hermione. Draco tries to tell people but they aren't really interested. "You try to shock people." -- "You've shocked them once too often, I think," Ron says. Lots of stuff about Ron and Draco's parenting styles and how they completely clash. Things about Draco writing Ron's kids into his will. Ron and Draco's relationship changes as they slowly realize that they're having a kid together and they never figured out what they were going to do with it afterward.

Finally, Ron has the baby (magical C-section).

Waking up the day after, Ron and Draco are terrified and awed. And by this time their relationship and approaches to parenting have drastically changed (insert vagueness here).

You never once see the baby.

[winstonmom.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for giving the closing I was craving. (I sound so pathetic) I enjoyed this wrap up a lot and will thank you for it again.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Well, this was only the general ideas I had floating around. I never committed to this story so I never had an outline, it was just an "update as I feel like it" fic. I was writing it because I didn't like MPreg. It's not that I hated the idea of MPreg. Just the cliches. I made a list once of the things I didn't like about MPreg, and Reunion was dealing with each one of them.

Let's see if I remember.

- Anal birthing (a.k.a. ass babies). Yuck.

Baby will be conceived via hermaphrodite potion, delivered via C-section.

- Magical baby "born of our love." How irritating.

Intentially planned baby born of ill-conceived scheme with little thought to the consequences. Instead of baby materializing easily, it will take tremendous effort, so much so that they'll give up.

The two men have no concept of what they're going to do with the baby after it's born and don't even have a solid relationship. They haven't communicated their intentions to each other so they're operating out of mismatched assumptions. Their ideas about parenting are radically different, so only slowly are the differences in their ideas about raising this child revealed to each other.

- Feminizing the pregnant male character. Argh! This is my number one complaint about MPreg. The aim was (before I rolled out of the HP fandom) to deal with that annoyance. Ron, once pregnant, was going to approach this from an unmistakably male perspective.

For example, instead of worrying about how fat he's getting, he's going to obnoxiously pull up his shirt and show off. He will cheerfully indulge any and all food cravings--and ask for seconds, pleased at the amount he can put away.

The mood swings of pregnancy were going to involve testosterone (his body trying to compensate for that potion), so his temper is going to be a major issue, along with the fact that the yelling will be accompanied by physical force. Ron will be dangerous. Fist through the wall. And then... sappy. And completely unaware that there's any change.

Rather than pregnancy being "private" and "special," he'll inform his friends of every new weird development -- whether they want to hear it or not. "Crazy, huh?" Some will beg not to be told. Others will just blanch. He will ignore this. "A friend will stand by me through thick and thin." He'll point to his growing stomach. "And you can't get much thicker than this." Harry: "You can say that again."

He will not have grown up with the cultural concept of bonding with the baby in the womb, so he'd regard it the same why you or I would regard a wart: a purely physical growth, nothing else. It's inconvenient, sure, but not a big deal. This won't change until he feels the first kick. Then it will totally weird him out that fuck, this is a baby. Then rather than being all warm and fuzzy about it, he'll wish he hadn't done this to himself.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

- The whole world revolves around the damned baby. *eyeroll* Either everyone is cooing or everyone is against it.

Ron and Draco both have complicated lives involving their other kids, ex-wives, jobs, friends, and family. The baby impacts these things, and you can see R & D's reasons for doing this, but even once Ron's pregnant, life is business as usual for everyone except Ron and to a lesser extent, Draco. Rather than cooing or being against it, most people just think they're a little crazy.

90% of the people in their lives treat the whole matter as either a joke or the way you treat in-vitro parents... with confused uncertainty, because you've heard ba

Draco, rather than being indulgent and understanding, will have never had to deal with pregnancy (his wife was handled by a medi-witch). He will react with fury, confusion, and disgust, finding the whole thing very, very disturbing. Even though it was his idea.

Rather than the baby being a beautiful lifetime event, Ron is downright casual about it, and they both have completely materialistic motives (Draco's inheritance, Ron's financial situation).

This isn't their first baby, and their kids (Ron and Draco's) will take the idea of another brother or sister very badly.

Ron's ex-wife will be disdainful, while Draco's estranged wife will manuever to keep her fortune.

Much of the story will not revolve around the pregnancy but around everything else in their lives that has led to them wanting this baby. So it will be a tour of what a mess both of their lives are, and how this dumb-idea-baby might not fix things but might actually make them worse.

The story is, in fact, about Ron and Draco (and screwed up relationships and the dumb reasons people get married, have kids, etc). The baby is just a device. The resolution is not in having the baby, but in the changes in their relationship. The baby never once even appears in the story.

[elizabeth-rice.livejournal.com]

SGA: In 'Tanlines and Dogtags', what were the two freak-outs about (the one before the almost kiss and the one after)? What was going through John's head both times?

HP: 'A '57 Vincent and a Red-headed Boy'. What happens between Sirius and Ron afterwards? Never talk to each other again? And Sirius dies at the end of Ron's fifth year too.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

'Tanlines and Dogtags'

The first freak-out was about John being turned on about Lorne's offer to take the pictures. He was pissed off because he didn't want to say no, but it was a damned stupid idea. John took the whole thing to be a rather elaborate pass, one where Lorne has provided plausible deniability for himself. (From the moment Lorne said he painted nude men, John identified Lorne as gay, or at least bi and very interested in men. He just didn't get that painting nudes was standard to art school.) And John's pissed at Lorne's stupidity in making a pass at his commanding officer with full knowledge of the kind of trouble John could get into (not to mention the risks Lorne was taking with his own career).

At the same time, Lorne's offer to take the photos brought up a tremendous amount of loneliness and frustration on John's part. It reminded John that he didn't have any options since basically the entire base reported to him. He was pissed because he'd been comfortable before without a sex life, he was happy, and suddenly... not so much. Really pissed when he found himself considering it, fantasizing about Lorne when Lorne wasn't really his type. He didn't go for the frat-boy look and Lorne was a little too short. But Lorne was good-looking, and more than that, he was trustworthy. John knew people and he knew that about Lorne. If they started... Lorne would keep the secret. In terms of practicalities, they were both officers and if Lorne didn't report to him (and wasn't, oh, a guy) he would have been one of the better options.

John gives in to temptation and schedules the off-world mission together. Then, crap, he regrets it. But he can't take himself off the mission without Lorne clueing in that he was freaking out. So John tells himself that he'll just see how far Lorne is going to take this. And Lorne doesn't do a god damned thing. John starts to doubt himself about whether Lorne was making a pass at all, because Lorne sure doesn't act like it -- and John's hurt (to his surprise), feeling rejected. He starts wondering if Lorne had been fucking with his head all along. A bi cock-tease. The only sign that Lorne might be interested was the extra size of his pack, and the extra muscle Lorne puts into carrying it.

John waits and waits and waits for Lorne to make a move, and they don't even talk about it. At this point, pissed off and beyond frustrated, motives tangled, and angry with Lorne for messing with him, he makes Lorne open his pack. And there's all the equipment. That's when it hits John: Lorne's going to make him make the first move and take all the risks.

At first John's cold-as-ice angry with Lorne about that. But as they fly away from the mainland in silence, he realizes that Lorne's right. He pretty much has to let John make the decision. It's up to John. He's the commanding officer.

Then Lorne startles him by asking, point blank. Which shakes the truth out of John. Yeah. He wants this. But he thinks Lorne is talking about sex and using the photography as code. Once it's out in the open and he's said yes, there's the tremendous almost giddy sense of relief. Yes, he wants it.

It takes a while to arrange another trip to the mainland. They have to be very, very careful about this. John's career is on the line (as is Lorne's) if anyone should even suspect.

John's breathless with freedom and rebellion when he and Lorne take off on their second trip to the mainland. He figures everyone will write off his speed record as daredevil flying and not a planned extra stop.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

The second freak-out... when John realizes that Lorne hadn't been making a pass all along, his mind just freezes on his own stupidity. He'd outed himself. He'd outed himself by making a pass at his second in command. John couldn't believe what an idiot he'd been. How desperate did he have to be to start seeing passes where they didn't exist? When Lorne tells him he doesn't have a problem with it, John's tremendously relieved, though it doesn't help the disappointment.

Once they're back and the dust settles, and nothing happens (thus proving John was right, Lorne is trustworthy), John starts to wonder: what did Lorne mean, "Doesn't have a problem with it." And Lorne knew a lot of "alternative types" -- what? He'd tried it before? John's slowly, suspiciously, not so sure he was wrong about Lorne. He's convinced that a guy who can be around it, can be had. He starts trying to find Lorne's "no fly" zones (they've already crossed a lot of lines anyway and Lorne's proven himself). If he were honest with himself, he'd admit that mostly he'd reached the point where he flat out wanted Lorne. Inaccessibility has always been a bit of a turn-on for John.

[elizabeth-rice.livejournal.com]

Aw, poor John. I feel so bad for him.

Thank you so much. I loved reading your thoughts on both stories. 'Reunion' too (above). ♥

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

'A '57 Vincent and a Red-headed Boy'

Not a lot happens between them after that. Sirius misses the warning sign that he was trying to hold onto his lost youth and continues to do so through projecting James onto Harry. Ron avoids Sirius at first because he feels guilty and gets angry whenever someone suggests that Sirius could even be remotely gay (weird, I know).

Once everyone moves to 12 Grimmauld Place, the war with Voldemort takes precedence, and for Ron the whole incident gets swept away by more immediate concerns. Sirius ruminates about the situation but it's just one more painful memory among many once he moves to his old family home. His glory days in school serve as a buttress against that pain.

[bruinsfan.livejournal.com]

SGA: In "Tanlines and Dogtags" (since I am both inordinately fond of and perhaps unhealthily fixated upon that story) you explored the aftermath of the day at the beach from Lorne's perspective, but what are John's thoughts and feelings in the weeks following, and how do they inform his behavior toward Lorne afterwards?